A single East African Tourists Visa launched and to be issued manually

Following the recently concluded presidents summit which was held in Kampala attended by Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyata, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Uganda’s Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and representatives from Tanzania, South Sudan and Burundi, a single East African Visa was launched. Tourists on a safari adventure to any of the three East African countries will be able to visit using a single visa card. This is expected to greatly advertise the 3 countries as a single tourism destination with numerous attractions for adventure.

Tourists intending to tour the region are expected to start their Safari from the country that issued the visa and depending on their wish, they may proceed to other remaining two countries without obtaining another visa card or paying another visa fee.

For the mean time, these visa cards (in Kenya and Uganda) are to be issued manually at the boarder points as a stopgap measure, said Uganda’s foreign Affairs minister, Sam Kuteeesa. This new move is to be experimented from Kenya and later spread to other countries within 2 weeks. However, Finance, Internal and Foreign Affairs ministers from the 3 countries were urged to meet and agree on modalities for a special visa fee account that will be monitored by the involved states.

Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta was the first to demonstrate the free movement in the region when he jetted into Uganda using his Kenyan Identity card. He stated that this single visa innovation will lead to a rapid growth of the region in terms of social, political and economical aspects.

The president of Rwanda (Paul Kagame) fully supported the move and praised the progress but advocated for more speed in the movement for the benefit of the East Africans. This is because the local people will enjoy free movement in the region using their National identity cards, voters cards and students cards.

Of all the 3 countries, it’s only in Uganda where people don’t have National Identity cards and the government was urged to speed up the issuance of the national identity cards. Member states were also asked to budget for E-Identity, E-Visa and E-border management.

Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya will have a common pavilion at the coming tourism fair in Berlin German as a way of representing East Africa as a single tourism destination. The whole world will get to know how serious the region is and why the region opted for the move. Tourists from different parts of the world will be attracted to come and enjoy a diverse collection of safari adventure at fair prices.

Initially, a tourist would be bothered to acquiring different visa cards for each East African country which hiked their expenditures but this has been solved. They will now acquire one visa card that will permit them to move freely through the region.

Apart from promoting tourism in the region ,a single visa will also promote trade and easy movement of goods. Traders will be required to acquire one visa card to move their goods to any of these three countries:- Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda.